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Quotes about philosophy

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Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, — Necessity and Free Will.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855), Essays, Goethe’s Works.
- Freedom
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Chapter I, aphorism 6, tr. Walter Kaufmann
All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward — this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his “soul.”
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Essay 2, Section 16
The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849)
The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
Helen Keller1880–1968Optimism (1903)
The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Philosophical Investigations (1953), § 133
I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), Part III, chapter II, “Solipsism”, p. 196
- Comedy
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956Baltimore Evening Sun (4 April 1927)
- Clever Jabs
- Theology
The more you know, the less you are impressed by Foucault.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 174
- Clever Jabs
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 45
- Knowledge
We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.
Alan Mooreborn 1953Watchmen (1986–1987)
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 6.44
The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.
Aristotle384–322 BCMetaphysics, Book VIII, 1045a.8–10
When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.
Kahlil Gibran1883–1931Sand and Foam (1926)
Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.
Albert Schweitzer1875–1965Letter to a Japanese Animal Welfare Society (1961)
- Religion